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    Rep Jim Banks Letter To Reddit 10.22.2019

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    Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) letter to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman dated October 22, 2019.

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    Rep Jim Banks Letter To Reddit 10.22.2019

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    Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) letter to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman dated October 22, 2019.

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    Rep Jim Banks Letter to Reddit 10.22.2019

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    Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) letter to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman dated October 22, 2019.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    Download as pdf
    21K views3 pages

    Rep Jim Banks Letter To Reddit 10.22.2019

    Uploaded by

    Allum
    Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) letter to Reddit CEO Steve Huffman dated October 22, 2019.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    ES Congress of the United States House of Representatives ‘Wlashington, BE 20515-1408 October 23, 2019 Mt, Steve Huffman CEO & co-founder Reddit, In. 420 Taylor Street San Francisco, CA 94102 Dear Mr. Huffman, Pm writing to you to request that you approve the quarantine appeal forthe subredlt, 1The_Donald. Although the intial imposition ofthe quarantine may have been justified, its continuation inthe face of r/The_Donalds compliance with sitewide content policies and ahead of the 2020 election amounts to ideologically motivated election interference. To this point, the ‘same content-policy violations that led to r/The_Donald’s quarantine take place regularly and egregiously in numerous left-wing subreddits. These subreddits have faced no repercussions. As Jong as oThe_Donald is quarantined, this double-standard completely discrects any claim Reddit has to poiical-neutrality. Before expounding on my above points, I should provide some ‘background on your website its policies, and the subreddit 1/The_Donald Reddit bills itself as “the front page ofthe internet” and consists of numerous user-moderated “subreddits” dedicated to posting about and discussing specific topics. Uses can curate their newsfeeds by subscribing to various subreddits that intrest them, The contert in each subredait is user-curated and community members either “upyote” or “downvote” posts which are displayed according to their popularity. Reddit's 150 million monthly pages views make it the thied largest social media website in the world, drawing more internet trafic ‘han Facebook. R/The_Donal isa subreddit for fans of President Trump that describes itselfas a “never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.” R/The_Donald was started in the run-up tothe 2016 election and has since grown toa user base of 777K—making it the largest conservative political subreddit by a wide margin edits content policy is mostly focused on blocking illegal content, but also includes prohibitions on content that “encourages or incites violence” and “threatens, rarasses, or bullies ‘or encourages others to do so.” These are admirable provisions. As you expisned during your ‘Wednesday appearance before the House Energy & Commerce Committee, each subreddits’ ‘user-moderators are responsible for emoving content that violates sitewide rules. a subredalts’ user-moderators fil to enforce Reddlt's content policy, the subreddit may be “quarantined” or in extreme cases, banned. When a subreddit is quarantined, amongst other things, it does not show up in sitewide searches and is excluded from sitewide content feeds. A quarantnes" general effect isto render its target invisible to Reddit users who haven't already subseribed, Reddit administrators first quarantined 1/The_Donald on June 26, 2019 for “repeated rule- ‘breaking behavior.” The most recent of which consisted of "encouragement of violence towards police offices and public officals in Oregon.” Interestingly, the announcement came a few ‘weeks after Senator Ron Wyden asked you, during « joint Q&A on reddit, why you had not yet banned 1/The Donald. Additionally, just two days before the announcement, the Democratic party's media watchdog, Media Mater, ran a piece about content violating comments oa The _Donald. The comients in question were repugnant, and I do not aim wo defend them nor deny that they violated Rests content policy. | would point out the indisputable fat that Reddit, with its 330 milion users, was and is rife with similarly disgusting rhetoric, When such comments are posted ia apolitical or left-wing subredlts, your administrative team has declined to take substantive action. Even when they have been posted atthe same time and concemed the same subject matter asthe comments that Jed to /The_Donald’s quarantine. After the controversy in Oregon, a commenter inthe liberal subreddt Politics had the following to say about Republican legislators: "Shoot these f¥ckers, Inthe knees. For running like pieces of sh¥.” Not one of the comments that led to The Donald's ban reached such a staggering level of vitriol. [Rthe Donald has its share of bad apples, but the larger #/The_Donald community appeats ill= disposed towards violent and hateful speech. This is made clear by the low vote scores ofthe ‘comments that led to its quarantine. The same cannot be said for certain subredits that your administrative team has allowed to loutish. Last Friday, the second highest rated comment on the most popular poston ant-police subredlt,r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, read, “F¥ck the police, ‘ACAB 1312, Build your gullotnes.” As of right now, it remains undeleted. I'm not going to ‘beleaguer my point and list the thousands of unaddressed, rule-breaking comments from left- Wing subredlits, but they are easy to find The effect of your continved quarantine of r/The_Donald extends beyond unfaimess to conservative Reddit users. Activity on political subreddts has real world politcal consequences. ‘An obvious instance would be the July 27, 2016 question and answer session then-candidate ‘Trump held with his supporters on r/The_Donald, Political subreddits also influence other online ‘media platforms. A 2017 study found that r/The_Donald contributed nearly 6% ofall news links ‘on Twitter. By quaraatining e/The_Donald you have clogged a welspring of conservative media content and damaged an avenve the President may well have used to communicate with his supporters ahead ofthe 2020 election, Other subreddits have seen their politcal efforts uninterrupted. In 2016, a moderator of SandersForPresident posted that he had “just got off a conference call with the Bernie 2016 national staff” and relayed instructions from the campaign for effective political volunteering. ‘Additionally, politica subreddits sometimes host voter registration drives. Ahead of the 2018 ‘midterms, a post linking to vote-gov on the liberal subreddits/Polities received 3.4 thousand ‘upvotes. [strongly support politcal communities right to organize on Reddit, but ou have failed to apply Reddit’s content rules in politically impartial manner. Mz. Huffman, moderators of eThe_Donald submitted ther third quarantine appeal request on October 1, 2019, According to Reddit’ content policy, quarantine appeals will be approved if they succeed in “demonstrating meaningful reform to the community.” During the month prior, Reddit administrators removed just four comments from r/The_Donal that violated sitewide content policies. Considering an estimated 14,455 content violating comments were removed from the site during that same period, e/The_Donald must now be one the most law-abiding communities on all of Reddit ‘Many of my Republican colleagues and I are concemed by an apparent left-wing bias in California technology companies. I's clear thatthe decision to quarantine «/The_Donald was ‘based on a standard of conduct that you failed to apply to left-wing subreddits. Given the original

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